Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1264: Chapter 1264 - Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons - 11

The horde no longer bothered waiting to gather more numbers after breaching the hundred-Platinum mark on the field; they simply resumed their relentless assaults, though with a distinct tactical pivot.

Previously, they had deployed five beasts per wave, directing all their hostility toward the shadow dragon.

Now, they were charging in groups of ten. And out of those ten, half were no longer targeting the guardian.

They were aiming straight for Lin’s Vanguard detachment.

While the five vanguard mutants hurled themselves at the human defenders, the creatures lagging behind initiated heavy elemental bombardments, striking both the Vanguard and the dragon alike, completely saturating the air with corrupted fire, water, and slicing wind.

The feigned dispute over the ancient beast’s custody was rapidly escalating into a genuine, lethal offensive against the humans.

Zhao and Yang processed the shift simultaneously.

”She figured it out,” Yang grunted, pouring extra mana into his stone and wood wall to withstand a fresh volley. ”Selthia knows Ren isn’t waiting here.”

”Given the massive explosion of energy they should be dropping up north, it was pretty obvious this would happen,” Zhao replied, firing a precise shot into the skull of a beast trying to break their formation. ”If the northern front houses the heavy hitters, the south doesn’t. She is no longer terrified of the fake Ren sitting next to Mayo... She now knows it is just a mirage.”

The southern decoy had officially expired.

Selthia was no longer operating under the paralyzing fear of a phantom Tamer who could supposedly annihilate her army in a single strike; she was playing her hand knowing full well that this southern squad was formidable but far from invincible, meaning she could finally afford to unleash her full aggression.

Zhao surveyed the changing tide, tracking the ten mutants charging in each wave and the heavy elemental artillery raining down upon their position, and made an immediate decision.

”It is time,” the sniper announced, ”to transition into phase two.”

And across all three global fronts, occurring almost simultaneously, the war shifted into its next stage: the north had become a literal inferno where Ren battled a living torch, the capital stood tense as Arturo’s dark premonition heralded an approaching storm, and the south was forced to brace as their clever decoy died and the corruption finally attacked with genuine, murderous intent.

♢♢♢♢

Selphira stood guard alongside Julius, Taro, and the rest of the Vanguard, ensuring the corrupted mutants did not interfere with Ren.

However, the mindless beasts had retreated much further than anyone anticipated just moments ago, pulling far away from the raging inferno consuming the swamp.

It was no longer necessary to actively block their elemental bombardments.

Selphira was on the verge of seeking a way to support Ren directly when two messages arrived. She quickly scanned the parchment; and then she looked upward, her expression tightening with deep concern.

She focused on the sky, where Ren’s colossal Hydra remained locked in a brutal clash of pressure against the living torch the black dragon had become.

High above the battlefield, the Hydra was still enduring an immense strain... Yet Ren felt neither panic nor dread.

Unlike his urgent duel against the Fire dragon, where he had fought practically in isolation and sustained the entire siege with his own reserves, he was not standing alone today. Luna and Larissa stepped up to join the fray.

They smoothly linked their auras to Ren, injecting their raw energy into his pathways so it could travel straight to the Hydra.

The massive jade beast responded instantly... Its crystalline wings flared with blinding intensity, and the triple elemental beams grew significantly thicker and denser, fueled by three distinct mana systems instead of one. The volatile point of contact against the black dragon’s burning breath, which had been steadily creeping backward, ground to a sudden halt. Then, inch by excruciating inch, the jade beam began to advance.

They were winning the war of pressure; still doing so slowly, but definitively winning.

Meanwhile, Liora kept her own reserves tightly contained. This was the specific priority Ren had assigned her: she needed to safeguard her power for anything short of a critical emergency, keeping her flames ready just in case they needed to incinerate a fresh wave of mutants later.

She was so intensely focused on maintaining that reserve to assist him that she hadn’t even noticed the corrupted horde had already pulled back, leaving nothing new to burn for the time being.

Ren maintained the fresh influx of power at a steady, constant rate. They were pushing the enemy back, though the margin of victory was thin. Even so, Ren refused to rush the process. He possessed the capacity to tap into a little more power, to push harder and conclude the clash much sooner. Doing so, however, would compromise his mana channels again. He would inevitably suffer fresh crystallization damage, undoing days of patient healing that would prove incredibly costly when the time came to regenerate the prison dome.

Worse still, his internal seed had already endured far too many interruptions and sustained excessive collateral damage... The very last thing Ren wanted to do was shatter it.

He could not risk that outcome, not after witnessing his little companion, Mooshito, invest so much time and grueling effort into keeping it stable. While he was currently forced to view the mushroom with a sad but healthy dose of suspicion, he still genuinely cared for the grumpy entity like family.

Ren could already feel that the small fraction of draconic energy currently coursing through his system was actively harming his system, pressing heavily against fragile pathways where it didn’t belong and leaving him feeling strangely overstimulated.

Drawing on even more power would be a terrible idea, unless it was absolutely necessary to win and became truly unavoidable.

Therefore, he kept the flow precisely balanced...

He maintained the highest output his veins could safely handle, without squeezing out a single drop more than that.

Liu suddenly sliced through Ren’s intense concentration with a direct audio transmission right in his ear. Despite standing hundreds of meters away on the ground beside Selphira and the others, Liu still possessed that unique capacity to project sound over vast distances.